Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

While the OFFICE of President remains in highest regard at NewEnergyNews, this administration's position on climate change makes it impossible to regard THIS president with respect. Below is the NewEnergyNews theme song until 2020.

Two bedrock principles have guided the work and advocacy of American sportsmen n for more than a century. First, under the North American Model of Wildlife
Conservation, wildlife in the United States is considered a public good to be
conserved for everyone and accessible to everyone, not a commodity that can
be bought and owned by the highest bidder.1

Second, since President Theodore
Roosevelt’s creation of the first wildlife refuges and national forests, sportsmen
have fought to protect wildlife habitat from development and fragmentation to
ensure healthy game supplies.

These two principles, however, are coming under growing fire from an aggressive
and coordinated campaign funded by the oil and gas industry.

As part of a major effort since 2008 to bolster its lobbying and political power,
the oil and gas industry has steadily expanded its contributions and influence over several major conservative sportsmen’s organizations, including
Safari Club International, or SCI, the National Rifle Association, or NRA, and
the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. The first two organizations have
assumed an increasingly active and vocal role in advancing energy industry
priorities, even when those positions are in apparent conflict with the interests
of hunters and anglers who are their rank-and-file members. The third group,
the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation, or CSF, is also heavily funded by oil
and gas interests and plays a key role in providing energy companies, SCI, the
NRA, gun manufacturers, and other corporate sponsors with direct access to
members of Congress.

The growing influence of the oil and gas industry on these powerful groups is reshaping the politics, policies, and priorities of American land and wildlife conservation.

In this report, we identify three high-profile debates in which the growing influence of the oil and gas industry in SCI, CSF, the NRA and other conservative
sportsmen groups could play a decisive role in achieving outcomes that are
beneficial to energy companies at the expense of habitat protection, science-based
management, and hunter and angler access to wildlife and public lands. These
areas to watch are:

• Endangered and threatened wildlife in oil- and gas-producing regions: The case
of the greater sage grouse and the lesser prairie chicken

• The backcountry: How the oil and gas industry and its allies are working to
undo protections of roadless areas and wilderness study areas

• Public access and ownership: The movement to privatize public lands and wildlife

The oil and gas industry’s growing investment in conservative sportsmen groups
is already yielding ever-greater influence over legislation and policy decisions that
benefit the industry’s financial interests at the expense of hunters and anglers.

Understanding and tracking this powerful lobbying alliance is of increasing importance e to those who believe that American sportsmen can and should continue to
be the standard-bearers for our nation’s conservation tradition and champions for
those who wish to defend the principles that have guided North American land
and wildlife stewardship for more than a century.

Since the 2008 presidential election, the oil and gas industry has expanded its
investments in Congressional lobbying, political campaigns, and advertising to
help advance and defend its policy agenda in Washington.
Between 2008 and 2013, the oil and gas industry spent $898 million to lobby
Congress, an increase of 127 percent over the previous six years.2

In 2012, fossil-fuel industries and their allies spent a record $270 million on
television advertising alone to help elect their preferred candidates, including
$176 million to defeat President Barack Obama.3
Since then, trade groups such as
the American Petroleum Institute, or API, have spent millions more on so-called
“branding” campaigns, which use television ads such as “I’m an Energy Voter” to
create the impression of widespread popular support for the industry’s agenda.4 Taken together, these investments have helped defeat climate
change legislation in Congress, preserve tax subsidies for oil and
gas companies, slow and weaken environmental protection rules,
and pressure federal officials to further expand and accelerate oil
and gas leasing on public lands.

New evidence indicates that, as part of its policy and political strategy, the oil and gas industry is now also heavily investing in and
influencing at least three of the nation’s most powerful sportsmen’s
organizations: Safari Club International, the National Riflemen’s
Association, and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation.

Together, at least 28 oil, gas, and energy companies have made
financial investments in the NRA and CSF since 2010, and,
although SCI does not list its corporate donors publicly, Federal
Election Commission files show that the oil and gas industry is a
major contributor to its political action committee.5
The contributions are so significant that oil and gas companies now represent as
much as 28.5 percent of the NRA’s corporate giving program.

It is important to note that because these three organizations do not publicly
disclose their donors, it is difficult to measure the full extent of the oil and gas
industry’s investments in them. Nonetheless, a review of publicly available information reveals that oil and gas companies not only heavily finance these organizations, they are also closely connected to them through their boards, consultants,
lobbyists, and a revolving door of staff, including former political appointees in
the President George W. Bush administration. We found, for example, at least 10
individuals with oil and gas industry ties who have been playing prominent roles
in and for the groups since 2010.7

Let’s look at each group more closely…Safari Club International…The National Rifle Association…Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation…Impact of influence: How the oil and gas industry’s investments are paying off…Threats to endangered and threatened wildlife in oil- and gas-producing regions…Threats to the backcountry…Threats to public access and ownership…

The oil and gas industry’s investments in sportsmen groups such as SCI, the NRA,
and CSF are, by all appearances, reaping significant benefits for industry at the
expense of wildlife and our public lands. Through SCI and the NRA, industry
has gained powerful allies in opposing the conservation of at-risk wildlife in areas
with oil and gas reserves, working to weaken protections for the backcountry and
endorsing the commodification and privatization of public resources. CSF, for
its part, enables oil and gas companies, their trade associations, and their lobbyists unmatched access to members of Congress to help advance these and other
industry priorities.

With such promising returns—in the form of even greater access to decision
makers and powerful allies speaking for their interests—we expect the oil and gas
industry’s investments in SCI, the NRA, CSF, and other conservative sportsmen
groups to only grow in the coming years. As they do, SCI and the NRA are likely
to stray even further from the principles of conservation that American sportsmen
have championed for the past century. This ongoing shift has severe implications
for U.S. natural resource and wildlife policy. We have identified three areas, in
particular, to watch over the coming year to gauge the evolving role of oil and gas
industry influence on SCI and NRA priorities, specifically:

1. How prominent and forceful of a role will SCI and NRA play in opposing
science-based efforts to conserve and recover the greater sage grouse?

2. Will SCI and the NRA translate their failed efforts to lift roadless protections
through H.R. 1581 into a broader and more visible campaign to block the passage of legislative and administrative efforts to protect new wilderness, monuments, and parks?

3. Will SCI and the NRA actively support efforts to privatize federal lands or
transfer them to states?

For both SCI and the NRA, taking any of these steps would represent an even
more radical shift away from the traditional mainstream values of American
sportsmen. And given their political power and financial resources, the continuing
anti-conservation advocacy of SCI and the NRA will have lasting consequences
for the management of public lands and wildlife at the expense of the public interest and America’s outdoor traditions.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.

As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.

In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.

As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.

Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.

Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman

"...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.

The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.

She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.

In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.

There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.

In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.

Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."

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